A Michigan priest transplanted to a New Mexican village confronts mistrust, mavericks, manipulators, and murder.

The Ghosts of Glorieta, A Fr. Jake Mystery

By Albert Noyer (link above takes you to Amazon.com and opens in a new window)

Rev. Casimir “Fr. Jake” Jakubowski reaches the retirement age of 70, yet wishes to continue his Michigan ministry. As a favor to Santa Fe’s Archbishop, the Detroit Prelate offers the liberal Fr. Jake a “Sabbatical year” in Providencia, a New Mexican village on the Rio Grande. Ill, reclusive pastor, Fr. Jesús Mora, and most villagers resent an outsider to their church of San Isidro — only mechanic Armando Herrera and teacher Cynthia Plow befriend Fr. Jake. After the pastor is murdered, evidence suggests he mighthave been involved long ago in a satanic Black Mass.

Amateur archaeologist Plow uncovers corpses of Union and Confederate dead at the ruins of a nearby Civil War fort, but also a more recent female skeleton. Detective Sonia Mora investigates that death, along with her priest uncle’s murder and that of a woman parishioner found dead in a sleazy motel. Violence erupts after Tex Houston’s film company, Pentacle Pix, arrives with quitclaim deeds to the land and plans to turn the village into a tourist horror set for his ghoulish B films.

Fr. Mora’s death sets off a chain of deadly discoveries that will engulf Fr. Jake, the parish finance officer, a sadistic deacon, an old curandera woman, the communes of both “Pentecostals” and anti-government survivalists, and Civil War re-enactors of the 1862 Battle of Glorieta Pass.

Commentary About Ghosts of Glorieta

“Noyer artfully weaves the story of Fr. Casimir “Jake” Jakubowski, displaced from his comfortable parish in Michigan and thrown into an impoverished New Mexican village. The liberal priest’s life becomes a mirage as a politically driven bishop, a dysfunctional pastor, a flim-flam Texan filmmaker and a fundamentalist commune collide with the oldSpanish ways of rural New Mexico. A brilliantly crafted exposé about a clash of cultures.”

PAGE ERWIN, author of Bones of Contention: A Maine Mystery.

The above is an Amazon link

“Noyer, a natural storyteller, has created an amiable character in Father Jake, who helps solve the mystery of a fellow priest against the backdrop of contemporary crisis in the Catholic church, a satanic mass and the re-enactment of the 1862 Civil War Battle of Glorieta in New Mexico."

RONALD MODRAS, author of Ignatian Humanism.

This is an Amzon link to Ronald Modras' book

“With an artful mesh of page-turning excitement, indigenous folklore, and historical detail, Noyer, author of the A.D. 5th century Getorius and Arcadia Mystery series, serves up another compelling literary adventure with his New Mexico-based thriller, “The Ghosts of Glorieta.”

LISA POLISAR, author of the acclaimed The Ghost of Mary Prairie.

This is a link to Lisa Polisar's author page on Amazon.

See "Ghosts" cover again.